Pardon our Delays

June 12, 2015

Hope folks are enjoying their summer! This is just a quick update to let everyone know that we may operate more slowly in the next 2-3 months. We have six fantastic genre editors at Paper Nautilus, and thankfully, they handle all of your poetry and prose submissions to our annual issue. Potential contributors for PN15 shouldn’t notice any real hiccups.

However, As Editor in Chief, I handle many other elements, including book order fulfillment, and reviewing the chapbook contest submissions. As a writer myself, I know how impatient I get when waiting to see a response to my own work – which is why I shifted the reading period for the 2015 contests to three months earlier in the year, so that it would be summer and I would have plenty of time to read the 250 manuscripts we received. I am unexpectedly moving out of state for work this summer, though, so now what was going to be time to read and re-read and enjoy everyone’s chapbook submissions is now time I’ll need to use for packing, moving, renting my home, and all the other tasks that accompany relocation.

These are all really exciting things, and I am by no means complaining! But, I do realize that it may be harder for me to have results to the contests by the timeframe we initially estimated, which was sometime in August. I am hoping results won’t be too far beyond that (and who knows, it may take me less time to get settled than I expect), but I think it’s important to be clear about how we operate, which includes aspects that can potentially impact our response times. And because I am splitting my time between two locations, only one of which has our inventory, depending on where I am, orders for issues or chapbooks may not be mailed until 7-10 days after they are placed.

In the meantime, my editors have given me great feedback on the work we’re receiving for PN15 and how excited they are about some of the pieces they’ve seen. And so, no matter where I’m living or how much longer it takes me to respond to everyone who submitted, I am always aware of how it is your work and your willingness to trust us with it that allows us to do what we do. Thanks for that.